Resurface head and replace valve seals etc at time of headgasket replacement or not?

OK, I blew my HG with a leaking EGR cooler that I put on to a flawlessly running vehicle. It was burning no oil and having no problems, but the fluid popped the HG.

It never over heated, in fact never even threw error codes, but I could see steam in the exhaust. Putting a good EGR cooler on did not stop the coolant loss.

I have the Felpro HG already and a Toyota kit coming with all the seals. Kit comes with new valve seals as well.

Local place wants $195 to clean head, regrind valves as needed and replace seals. Another $60 to resurface head. Seems fair and they have an excellent reputation.

But they take 10-14 days and I'd like to keep moving. This vehicle has 150k miles and needs to last another 3 years and perhaps 50k miles. The car was sideswiped so its no beauty anymore but its been reliable and in 3 years my daughter plans to buy a new car.

I have read lots of threads, but cannot decide whether to re-work the heads or not. I have a good straight edge (accurate to .0001") and feeler gauges, so I will check the head (and the block) for true and check the valves with the brake cleaner trick..... If I find a problem, I'll definitely have the heads worked on.

But it would be really nice to have my garage back...... What the consensus? I don't need perfect, just running for 3yrs/40 k miles or so........

 

Guess I should check and see how much trouble putting in the valve stem seals is. Good point. I'll have toyota seals.

Aside -- I once had a subaru boxer engine that some idiot had cleaned off the block with a "wiz-wheel" (like a roll-loc disc) and has rounded the aluminum edges. Which resulted in repeated HG failures. Proper way to fix that is to split the boxer block, deck the half blocks and reassemble. What I did: Get a piece of true plate glass big enough for 2 sheets of wet/dry fastened to glass with spray contact cement. Then using wd-40 as lube, I honed that block 180>220>320>400>600. First pass you could instantly see the rounded edges of the cylinders. It was going strong 6 years and 50k miles later, when I sold it.

 

I found a video about doing valve seals and lapping pitted valves on youtube. Guy seemed competent, and it seems pretty easy. I ordered a $20 spring compressor from Amazon! As for not lapping and needing proper measurements, my understanding is that the hydrauliic lifters will compensate for any changes.